I often say I've spent more time with photography than I have with literature just in terms of hours.
There are no small churches, just small people.
I teach literature. That's easy for me. Take someone else's work and talk about it.
But for a few phrases from his letters and an odd line or two of his verse, the poet walks gagged through his own biography.
A children's biography doesn't have to be comprehensive, and it doesn't have to be definitive. It does have to be accurate, to the extent that's possible. And most of all, it has to be a piece of literature, a compelling read. I want the reader to discover the joy of reading.
In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them
I object to publishers: the one service they have done me is to teach me to do without them. They combine commercial rascality with artistic touchiness and pettishness, without being either good business men or fine judges of literature.
Since the last decades of the nineteenth century, revolt against the objectified world has determined the character of art and literature.
Who sows fear, reaps weapons.
I can't think of any other job in journalism where the newsmakers come to you.
The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.
'Tis pleasant, sure, to see one's name in print. A book's a book, although there's nothing in 't.
Death is easier than a wretched life; and better never to have born than to live and fare badly.
Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting.
All right, then, I'll go to hell.
Writers and scholars have emerged in recent times (some familiar, some new) to continue to challenge the notion of a literature that encompasses the world - and reaffirms our existence in it. It is a multicultural vision that embraces and includes our shrinking universe; it is a multicultural vision that the white man fears and a vision that the rest of us can celebrate.
I was kidnapped by literature at a young age and never wanted to be ransomed.
Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture.
The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.
If conversation be an art, like painting, sculpture, and literature, it owes its most power charm to nature; and the least shade of formality or artifice destroys the effect of the best collection of words.
